The Clean Coder: a code of Conduct For Professional Programmers

C
O NTE NT S

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C
ONTENTS
x
Chapter 3 
Saying Yes 
45
A Language of Commitment 
47
Learning How to Say “Yes” 
52
Conclusion 56
Chapter 4 
Coding 
57
Preparedness 58
The Flow Zone 
62
Writer’s Block 
64
Debugging 66
Pacing Yourself 
69
Being Late 
71
Help 73
Bibliography 76
Chapter 5 
Test Driven Development 
77
The Jury Is In 
79
The Three Laws of TDD 
79
What TDD Is Not 
83
Bibliography 84
Chapter 6 
Practicing 
85
Some Background on Practicing 
86
The Coding Dojo 
89
Broadening Your Experience 
93
Conclusion 94
Bibliography 94
Chapter 7 
Acceptance Testing 
95
Communicating Requirements 
95
Acceptance Tests 
100
Conclusion 111
Chapter 8 
Testing Strategies 
113
QA Should Find Nothing 
114

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C
ONTENTS
xi
The Test Automation Pyramid 
115
Conclusion 119
Bibliography 119
Chapter 9 
Time Management 
121
Meetings 122
Focus-Manna 127
Time Boxing and Tomatoes 
130
Avoidance 131
Blind Alleys 
131
Marshes, Bogs, Swamps, and Other Messes 
132
Conclusion 133
Chapter 10 
Estimation 
135
What Is an Estimate? 
138
PERT 141
Estimating Tasks 
144
The Law of Large Numbers 
147
Conclusion 147
Bibliography 148
Chapter 11 
Pressure 
149
Avoiding Pressure 
151
Handling Pressure 
153
Conclusion 155
Chapter 12 
Collaboration 
157
Programmers versus People 
159
Cerebellums 164
Conclusion 166
Chapter 13 
Teams and Projects 
167
Does It Blend? 
168
Conclusion 171
Bibliography 171

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C
ONTENTS
xii
Chapter 14 
Mentoring, Apprenticeship, and Craftsmanship 
173
Degrees of Failure 
174
Mentoring 174
Apprenticeship 180
Craftsmanship 184
Conclusion 185
Appendix A Tooling 
187
Tools 189
Source Code Control 
189
IDE/Editor 194
Issue Tracking 
196
Continuous Build 
197
Unit Testing Tools 
198
Component Testing Tools 
199
Integration Testing Tools 
200
UML/MDA 201
Conclusion 204
Index 205

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xiii
F
O R E WO R D
You’ve picked up this book, so I assume you are a software professional. That’s 
good; so am I. And since I have your attention, let me tell you why I picked up 
this book.
It all starts a short time ago in a place not too far away. Cue the curtain, lights 
and camera, Charley ….
Several years ago I was working at a medium-sized corporation selling highly 
regulated products. You know the type; we sat in a cubicle farm in a three-story 
building, directors and up had private offices, and getting everyone you needed 
into the same room for a meeting took a week or so.
We were operating in a very competitive market when the government opened 
up a new product.
Suddenly we had an entirely new set of potential customers; all we had to do 
was to get them to buy our product. That meant we had to file by a certain 
deadline with the federal government, pass an assessment audit by another date, 
and go to market on a third date.

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xiv
F
OREWORD
Over and over again our management stressed to us the importance of those 
dates. A single slip and the government would keep us out of the market for a 
year, and if customers couldn’t sign up on day one, then they would all sign up 
with someone else and we’d be out of business.
It was the sort of environment in which some people complain, and others 
point out that “pressure makes diamonds.”
I was a technical project manager, promoted from development. My responsibility 
was to get the web site up on go-live day, so potential customers could download 
information and, most importantly, enrollment forms. My partner in the endeavor 
was the business-facing project manager, whom I’ll call Joe. Joe’s role was to work 
the other side, dealing with sales, marketing, and the non-technical requirements. 
He was also the guy fond of the “pressure makes diamonds” comment.
If you’ve done much work in corporate America, you’ve probably seen the 
finger-pointing, blamestorming, and work aversion that is completely natural. 
Our company had an interesting solution to that problem with Joe and me.
A little bit like Batman and Robin, it was our job to get things done. I met with 
the technical team every day in a corner; we’d rebuild the schedule every single 
day, figure out the critical path, then remove every possible obstacle from that 
critical path. If someone needed software; we’d go get it. If they would “love to” 
configure the firewall but “gosh, it’s time for my lunch break,” we would buy 
them lunch. If someone wanted to work on our configuration ticket but had 
other priorities, Joe and I would go talk to the supervisor.
Then the manager.
Then the director.
We got things done.
It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that we kicked over chairs, yelled, and 
screamed, but we did use every single technique in our bag to get things done, 
invented a few new ones along the way, and we did it in an ethical way that I am 
proud of to this day.

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xv
I thought of myself as a member of the team, not above jumping in to write a 
SQL statement or doing a little pairing to get the code out the door. At the time, 
I thought of Joe the same way, as a member of the team, not above it.
Eventually I came to realize that Joe did not share that opinion. That was a very 
sad day for me.
It was Friday at 1:00 
pm
; the web site was set to go live very early the following 
Monday.
We were done. *DONE*. Every system was go; we were ready. I had the entire 
tech team assembled for the final scrum meeting and we were ready to flip the 
switch. More than “just” the technical team, we had the business folks from 
marketing, the product owners, with us.
We were proud. It was a good moment.
Then Joe dropped by.
He said something like, “Bad news. Legal doesn’t have the enrollment forms 
ready, so we can’t go live yet.”
This was no big deal; we’d been held up by one thing or another for the length 
of the entire project and had the Batman/Robin routine down pat. I was ready, 
and my reply was essentially, “All right partner, let’s do this one more time. 
Legal is on the third floor, right?”
Then things got weird.
Instead of agreeing with me, Joe asked, “What are you talking about Matt?”
I said, “You know. Our usual song and dance. We’re talking about four PDF 
files, right? That are done; legal just has to approve them? Let’s go hang out in 
their cubicles, give them the evil eye, and get this thing 
done
!”
Joe did not agree with my assessment, and answered, “We’ll just go live late next 
week. No big deal.”